Re: Introducing Myself and PeerPoint

On 17 July 2012 01:01, Poor Richard <poor.ricardo@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi RWW team,
>
> I'm Poor Richard, new to the group and W3C community. I'm a writer these
> days with some old (but pretty varied) IT experience in a corporate LAN/WAN
> distributed computing and web 1.0 environment. I used to design and code
> some intranet, web, and database apps but I haven't fired up a code editor
> or IDE in about a decade. All I can say I've retained is a general
> familiarity with the development process and some internet and www
> fundamentals. Now I'm retired and what I mainly do is write.
>
> Lately I've started working on something which is a bit of a stretch called"PeerPoint: An Open
> P2P Requirements Definition and Design Specification Proposal."
>
> PeerPoint is an embryonic requirements definition. What is different about
> it, as far as I can tell, is that it aims to encompass all of web 3.0 in
> scope, starting at the topmost level of user requirements, predicated on
> the urgent imperatives for greater social justice, sustainability, and an
> open society. In short, PeerPoint aims to describe the full compilation of
> applications we desperately need for a new economy and a new culture. The
> big corporations like Google and Facebook are working towards greater
> enclosure (more walled gardens), more user surveillance, more user
> exploitation, etc. so the internet actually becomes more centralized and
> less free by the month. The internet is not getting any 99% or OWS
> friendlier. An internet platform for implementing a fair and sustainable
> society must come from the indy FOSS community, and it must be designed to
> be a free (or very low cost) turnkey commodity for masses of generic,
> non-technical internet citizens.
>
> "Master plans" like PeerPoint are generally considered naive in FOSS land
> because non-commercial development is self-motivated and anarchistic. Thus
> few have taken on the job of planning beyond their own technical spheres of
> interest. And nobody (as far as I can tell) in the FOSS world has been
> assigned or taken it upon themselves to define and aggregate the user
> requirements over all major application domains under one framework. Not
> finding a coherent, universal mapping between the people's needs and
> current technical capabilities, I appointed myself and anyone I can recruit
> to do this.
>
> PeerPoint is not intended to replace existing requirements definitions or
> specifications but rather to complement them. It is intended to be a
> cross-reference between user needs and the most appropriate solution sets.
> It is meant to connect dots and fill in gaps in the hope of more rapid
> convergence and more comprehensive, seamless solutions. Because the
> resource in shortest supply for Planet Earth is time, not programmers.
>
> I'm not lobying to make PeerPoint a RWW project, but everyone is warmly
> invited to check it out and to collaborate if the spirit moves you.
>
> If you do open the PeerPoint doc, please let me know at what page you stop
> reading.
>
> Richard
>
> PeerPoint:
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TkAUpUxdfKGr_5Qio2SlZcnBu_sgnZWdoVTZuD_Regs/edit?pli=1#


So I managed to set aside time to read this, and am happy to say I got all
the way through it (this time :)).

It's a fantastic read and captures the heart of so many of the projects and
concepts we are working on in RWW.  I think the spirit is captured in the
first paragraph:

“Sovereign Computing <http://www.advogato.org/article/808.html>”:

“To be the true owner of your information and of your computer's hardware
resources, as well as to share these things in any way you want and only
with whomever you want. To participate in the Internet free of the
middleman, as an autonomous, independent and sovereign individual.”


What I personally enjoyed about this, is the ambition of the vision, of
using technology to benefit humanity.  I think a lot of that also comes
through when you read "Weaving the Web".  Or watch some of the videos that
timbl presents.  One I particularly like is from about 4 years ago from
annaberg where Tim presents the web "roadmap" and talks about how the web
could make a better society.  "Dont aim low", is the message:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_2YWiaPJ6A

At this point I think it may be an idea to step back and see where we are,
and where we would like to go.

The Web is a Universal information space that, while still very young in
it's evolution (perhaps <10% baked), already benefits for an enormous
network effect.

Realistically, the Web is unlikely to have a serious challenger, at least
for the next decade, and given the current growth rate, perhaps even
thereafter.

Yet even still, the Web is not based on competition, the idea is
collaboration.  The web (based on http) will assimilate useful projects
based on other protocols, you just need to look at the success of Webmail
to see this is clearly the case.

Given the large number of fantastic projects listed on PeerPoint I think
there's a good vector to differentiate.  And that is in line with the
"axioms of the web".

http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Axioms.html

In particular, Axiom 0a, which is perhaps the fundamental axiom of the web:

*"Axiom 0a: Universality 2 Any resource of significance should be given a
URI."
*
I would say most projects fall at this hurdle.

That's not to say that some of those projects will one day be compelling
enough to be assimilated by the Web, but it seems unclear which to bet on,
and which not to.  Simply put, use URIs to describe things, preferably use
HTTP URIs and reuse Web Standards, which are designed to scale.

Therefore, there is a clear benefit in focusing on projects that are well
aligned to the Web.  That is what we tend to primarily look for in this
group.  The long term benefit will come from the network effect, as both
The Web, and Linked Data grow.  It also gives a 'first mover' advantage,
which we've seen to be important historically on The Web.

I think PeerPoint is an ambitious vision, and one that could be well
aligned with the work we are doing in RWW.  It's something we can build,
and I think the very best way of achieving this vision is to bootstrap the
Web itself, by making it more Peer to Peer, by making it more Read / Write,
and by reusing Web Standards that are designed for massive network
ecosystems.

By following the axioms of the Web (in particular, universality and
tolerance) we can align the technology to the ambitious vision of Weaving
the Web ("Everything connected to Everything") and PeerPoint (sovereign
computing), to continue, not just to produce a better technology, but also
to create dividend to society, and human beings everywhere.